Easy Rider (1969) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Two counterculture bikers travel from Los Angeles to New Orleans in search of America. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 37 titles created 05 Oct 2013 a list of 34 titles created 28 Jan 2014 a list of 30 titles created 12 Sep 2014 a list of 45 titles created 31 Oct 2014 a list of 29 titles created 18 Sep 2015 Search for " Easy Rider " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 8 wins & 12 nominations.

See more awards » Videos A dropout from upper-class America picks up work along the way on oil rigs when his life isn't spent in a squalid succession of bars, motels, and other points of interest. Director: Bob Rafelson Bonnie Parker, a bored waitress falls in love with an ex-con named Clyde Barrow and together they start a violent crime spree through the country, robbing cars and banks. Director: Arthur Penn A naive hustler travels from Texas to New York to seek personal fortune but, in the process, finds himself a new friend. Director: John Schlesinger Two Navy men are ordered to bring a young offender to prison but decide to show him one last good time along the way. Director: Hal Ashby In 1951, a group of high schoolers come of age in a bleak, isolated, atrophied West Texas town that is slowly dying, both culturally and economically. Director: Peter Bogdanovich A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter. Director: Mike Nichols A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies.

Director: Nicholas Ray The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child. Director: David Lynch An aging group of outlaws look for one last big score as the "traditional" American West is disappearing around them. Director: Sam Peckinpah A man upon retirement embarks on a journey to his estranged daughter's wedding only to discover more about himself and life than he ever expected. Director: Alexander Payne A couple of high school grads spend one final night cruising the strip with their buddies before they go off to college. Director: George Lucas Edit Storyline Two young "hippie" bikers, Wyatt and Billy sell some dope in Southern California, stash their money away in their gas-tank and set off for a trip across America, on their own personal odyssey looking for a way to lead their lives. On the journey they encounter bigotry and hatred from small-town communities who despise and fear their non-conformism. However Wyatt and Billy also discover people attempting 'alternative lifestyles' who are resisting this narrow-mindedness, there is always a question mark over the future survival of these drop-out groups.

The gentle hippie community who thank God for 'a place to stand' are living their own unreal dream. The rancher they encounter and his Mexican wife are hard-pushed to make ends meet. Even LSD turns sour when the trip is a bad one. Death comes to seem the only freedom. When they arrive at a diner in a small town, they are insulted by the local rednecks as weirdo degenerates. They are arrested on some minor pretext by the local sheriff and ... Written by alfiehitchie It's here! EASY RIDER ...the biggest hit in the cinema today! (British Quad) See more » Genres: 26 June 1969 (Sweden) See more » Also Known As: Mono (Western Electric Sound System) Color: Did You Know? Trivia Tom Mankiewicz was in New Orleans at the same time working on a TV music special. "I ran into Dennis and Peter by accident. Nobody had any idea that Easy Rider (1969) would become some kind of classic. But, my God, if I had the money, I wouldn't have given it to them. They were loaded all day long".

See more » Goofs The commune is set in New Mexico, but the VW bus has California license plates, and the ocean can be seen in the background. See more » Quotes Sheriff : Whatcha think we oughta do with them? Cat Man : I don't never know. But I don't think they'll make the parish line. See more » Connections (Philadelphia, PA) – See all my reviews Not many films have documented an era of American culture the way it must have really been. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES captured the reality of the post-war 1940's. TAXI DRIVER is a masterpiece of social distortion and paranoia exemplary of the 1970's. No film other than EASY RIDER captures the late 1960's as seen by the American counter-culture. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper's story of two men who go in search of America and 'freedom' is a bona fide sign of the times. I may not have been around at the time, but it is great to see a film portraying the long-haired, hippie attitude towards an America in turmoil in the form of a biker flick, circa 1969.

EASY RIDER is an exploration of vast and desolate parts of the country. Of course, the stop at Mardi Gras is a necessity, but what Fonda and director Hopper are trying to tell us is that there was no 'freedom' as they saw it. The sprawling journey shows filmgoers the multiple frictions and shattered idealism of a generation in the midst of cultural change. Sex, drugs, and music were exploding socially and 1960's ideology may have come to an end in 1969, literally and figuratively speaking - much like it shockingly does in this film. Peter Fonda plays cool "Captain America", otherwise known as Wyatt, while Hopper is a paranoid prophet of the hippies as "Billy the Kid". The stunning DVD version of the film notes the importance of Laszlo Kovacs, the director of photography. Much of the film consists of Kovacs' simple shooting of the riders as they travel spiraling highways and bigoted backroads. It is some beautiful footage and essential to the trip. A major deal is made, much grass is smoked, and the film takes off from there.

Their ultimate goal is never clearly defined, but Fonda's final comment to Hopper may sum it up for viewers. Did they find what America was supposed to be about? I guess not according to Fonda. There is a surreal experience at a commune the Kid and Wyatt stop at. These scenes are out of a Fellini film. One significant shot paints the commune with a 360 degree pan across the faces of the live-in hippies. The expressions on the faces all seem different, some grinning, others just zoned out. Kovac's amazing camera work (especially on the road with the bikes) along with a virtual who's who in rock music of the late 60's makes for a sometimes visceral filmgoing experience. The immortal 'Born to be Wild' blares over the opening title sequence and everyone from Hendrix to The Byrds are heard throughout. EASY RIDER also contains one of Jack Nicholson's 2 or 3 most memorable performances, even to this day. As drunken lawyer "George Hanson", he creates an amazingly funny and perfect counterpoint to Hopper and Fonda. He realizes what the general public can think of the "long-hairs" and puts himself in danger just by traveling with them.

A bizarre notion of alien presence in the U.S. government is part of a hilarious conversation Nicholson and Hopper have over Whiskey and smoke. His scenes on Fonda's chopper with the golden football helmet are absolute, cinematic classics. Credit must be given to Fonda, Hopper, Nicholson, Kovacs, and Terry Southern for giving a new face to movie-making. They captured the era in a raw, jump cutting fashion. Maybe the hippies were not entirely right by trying to live off the land, or smoking dope all the time, but they may have been onto something. RATING: ***1/2 140 of 168 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Easy Rider Movie Review & Film Summary (1969) | Roger Ebert Tweet Nobody went to see "Easy Rider" (1969) only once. It became one of the rallying-points of the late '60s, a road picture and a buddy picture, celebrating sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and the freedom of the open road. It did a lot of repeat business while the sweet smell of pot drifted through theaters. Seeing the movie years later is like opening a time capsule.

It provides little shocks of recognition, as when you realize they aren't playing "Don't Bogart That Joint" for laughs. Advertisement Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper play Captain America and Billy, journeying cross-country on their motorcycles, using a drug deal in Los Angeles to finance a trip to Mardi Gras. The drug is cocaine (sold to a dealer played by rock producer Phil Spector ), but their drug of choice is marijuana. Billy gets the giggles around the campfire at night. Captain America, who could handle it better, is cool, quiet, remote, a Christ figure who flies the American flag on his gas tank, his helmet and the back of his leather jacket. (It would be a year later, after the release of "Joe," that flag decals were co-opted by the right.) The making of the movie became a Hollywood legend. Fonda and Hopper took their screenplay (co-written with Terry Southern ) to the traditional home of motorcycle movies, American-International Pictures. But Sam Arkoff turned them down, and they finally found funding at Columbia.

The budget was so limited, there was no money for an original score, so Hopper, the director, slapped on a scratch track of rock 'n' roll standards for the first studio screening. The executives loved the sound and insisted the songs be left in, and "Easy Rider" begat countless later movies that were scored with oldies. Motorcycle movies were not fashionable in 1969, although " Hell's Angels on Wheels " made an attempt in 1967 to break free of the booze-and-violence cliches. Directed by Richard Rush (" The Stunt Man "), it was a largely overlooked precursor to "Easy Rider," sharing the same cinematographer, Laszlo Kovacs , and even the same little-known actor in a colorful supporting role: Jack Nicholson , who played a gas station attendant named Poet. "Hell's Angels on Wheels" is a great-looking movie, but it took "Easy Rider" to link two symbols of rebellion -- motorcycles and the hippie counterculture -- and catch the spirit of the time. Advertisement "Easy Rider" was playing in theaters at about the time Woodstock Nation was gathering in upstate New York.

It plays today more as a period piece than as living cinema, but it captures so surely the tone and look of that moment in time. There's heavy symbolism as Fonda throws away his wristwatch before setting off on the journey, and the establishing scenes, as Captain America and Billy stash their loot in a gas tank and set off down the backroads of the Southwest, are slowly paced -- heavy on scenery, light on dialogue, pregnant with symbolism and foreboding. One of their bikes needs work, and they borrow tools at a ranch, leading to a labored visual juxtaposition of wheel-changing and horse-shoeing. Then they have dinner with the weathered rancher and his Mexican-American brood, and Fonda delivers the first of many quasi-profound lines he will dole out during the movie: "It's not every man who can live off the land, you know. You can be proud." (The rancher, who might understandably have replied, "Who the hell asked you?" nods gratefully.) A hitchhiker leads them to a hippie commune that may have seemed inspiring in 1969, but today looks banal.

A "performance troupe" sings "Does Your Hair Hang Low?" on a makeshift stage, while stoned would-be hippie farmers wander across the parched earth, scattering seed. "Uh, get any rain here?" Billy asks. "Thank you for a place to make a stand," Captain America says. The group leader gives the Captain and Billy a tab of acid and the solemn advice, "When you get to the right place, with the right people -- quarter this." Advertisement If "Easy Rider" had continued in the vein of its opening scenes, it's a good question whether anyone would remember it today. The film comes alive with the electrifying entry of the Jack Nicholson character, a lawyer named George Hanson whom they meet in a jail cell. (They have been jailed for "parading without a permit" after wheeling their bikes into a small-town parade.) Historic moments in the cinema are not always this easy to identify: Nicholson had been in movies for years, but his jailhouse dialogue in "Easy Rider" instantly made him a star. "You boys don't look like you're from this part of the country," he says.

He's an alcoholic lawyer on good terms with the cops; he arranges their release, supplies the name of a topnotch whorehouse in New Orleans, and says that he's started out for Mardi Gras many times without getting past the state line. That sets up the film's most famous shot: George on the back of Billy's motorcycle, wearing a football helmet. Nicholson's work in "Easy Rider" created a sensation. Audiences loved his sardonic, irreverent personality and were primed for his next film, " Five Easy Pieces " (1970), with its immortal chicken salad sandwich dialogue. Then and now, "Easy Rider" comes alive while the Nicholson character is in the movie. That night around the campfire, he samples grass for the first time ("Lord have mercy, is that what that is?") and then explains his theory that extraterrestrials walk among us. He uses a confiding tone, sharing outrageous information as if he's conferring a favor; it would become his trademark.

Advertisement George is killed shortly afterward, by rednecks who have seen them in a roadside cafe and decide they look "like refugees from a gorilla love-in." The impact of his death seems shortchanged in the movie, which hurries on to New Orleans. Captain America and Billy find the legendary whorehouse and drop acid in the cemetery with two hookers (including Karen Black in one of her earliest film roles). It's a bad trip, but maybe they chose the wrong place with the wrong people. The last act of the movie is preordained. There have been ominous omens along the way (and even a brief flash-forward to Captain America's flaming death). Rednecks in a pickup truck use a shotgun to blast both men from their bikes. The camera climbs high into the sky on a crane, pulling back to show us the inevitable fate, I guess, of anyone who dares to be different. Advertisement The symbolic deaths of heroes became common in movies after " Bonnie and Clyde " (1967), and Pauline Kael noted in her "Easy Rider" review that "the movie's sentimental paranoia obviously rang true to a large, young audience's vision.

In the late '60s, it was cool to feel that you couldn't win, that everything was rigged and hopeless." One of the reasons that America inspires so many road pictures is that we have so many roads. One of the reasons we have so many buddy pictures is that Hollywood doesn't understand female characters (there are so many hookers in the movies because, as characters, they share the convenience of their real-life counterparts: They're easy to find and easy to get rid of.) The motorcycle picture was a special kind of road/buddy movie that first came into view with Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" (1954), flourished in the late 1960s, and more or less disappeared a few years later. The movie grew out of pictures like "The Wild Angels" (1966, also starring Fonda), but it also expressed a notion that the counterculture believed in at the time: You could leave the city and return to more natural roots. A sweet idea, but one that did not coexist easily with drugs.

In scenes like the one where Hopper and Fonda teach Nicholson how to inhale, there's a quietly approving air, as if life is a treatable disease, and pot is the cure. Advertisement But Billy is paranoid, probably because of all the grass he smokes, and in later scenes, they're oblivious to the dangers they invite with their strange appearance. (There's a scene where they excite teenage girls in a restaurant with their aura of sexual danger, and local Good Old Boys feel threatened and plot revenge.) Many deep thoughts were written in 1969 about Fonda's dialogue in a scene the night before his death. Hopper is ecstatic because they've made it to their destination with their drug money intact. "We blew it," Fonda tells him. "We blew it, man." Heavy. But doesn't the movie play differently today from the way its makers intended? Cocaine in 1969 carried different connotations from those of today, and it is possible to see that Captain America and Billy died not only for our sins, but also for their own. This essay is based on my 1994 re-review of the film, revised for inclusion in the Great Movies series.

My original review is online at rogerebert.com, where there are also reviews of the similarly themed films "Hell's Angels on Wheels" and "The Wild Angels." Advertisement Movie Review - - Easy Rider': A Statement on Film - NYTimes.com Easy Rider': A Statement on Film By VINCENT CANBY Published: July 15, 1969 "EASY RIDER," which opened yesterday at the Beekman, is a motorcycle drama with decidedly superior airs about it. How else are we to approach a movie that advertises itself: "A man went looking for America. And couldn't find it anywhere"? Right away you know that something superior is up, that somebody is making a statement, and you can bet your boots (cowboy, black leather) that it's going to put down the whole rotten scene. What scene? Whose? Why? Man, I can't tell you if you don't know. What I mean to say is, if you don't groove, you don't groove. You might as well split. I felt this way during the first half-hour of "Easy Rider," and then, almost reluctantly, fell into the rhythm of the determinedly inarticu-late piece.

Two not-so-young cyclists, Wyatt (Peter Fonda) who affects soft leather breeches and a Capt. America jacket, and Billy (Dennis Hopper), who looks like a perpetually stoned Buffalo Bill, are heading east from California toward New Orleans. They don't communicate with us, or each other, but after a while, it doesn't seem to matter. They simply exist—they are bizarre comic strip characters with occasional balloons over their heads reading: "Like you're doing your thing," or some such. We accept them in their moving isolation, against the magnificent Southwestern landscapes of beige and green and pale blue. They roll down macadam highways that look like black velvet ribbons, under skies of incredible purity, and the soundtrack rocks with oddly counterpointed emotions of Steppenwolf, the Byrds, the Electric Prunes — dark and smoky cries for liberation. Periodically, like a group taking a break, the cyclists stop (and so does the music) for quiet encounters—with a toothless rancher and his huge, happy family or with a commune of thin hippies, whose idyll seems ringed with unacknowledged desperation. Suddenly, however, a strange thing happens.

There comes on the scene a very real character and everything that has been accepted earlier as a sort of lyrical sense impression suddenly looks flat and foolish. Wyatt and Billy are in a small Southern town—in jail for having disturbed the peace of a local parade—when they meet fellow-in-mate George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), a handsome, alcoholic young lawyer of good family and genially bad habits, a man whose only defense against life is a cheerful but not abject acceptance of it. As played by Nicholson, George Hanson is a marvelously realized character, who talks in a high, squeaky Southern accent and uses a phrase like "Lord have mercy!" the way another man might use a four-letter word. Hanson gets the cyclists sprung from jail and then promptly joins them. He looks decidedly foolish, sitting on the back of Wyatt's bike, wearing a seersucker jacket and his old football helmet, but he is completely happy and, ironically, the only person in the movie who seems to have a sense of what liberation and freedom are. There is joy and humor and sweetness when he smokes grass for the first time and expounds an elaborate theory as to how the Venutians have already conquered the world.

Nicholson is so good, in fact, that "Easy Rider" never quite recovers from his loss, even though he has had the rather thankless job of spelling out what I take to be the film's statement (upper case). This has to do with the threat that people like the nonconforming Wyatt and Billy represent to the ordinary, self-righteous, inhibited folk that are the Real America. Wyatt and Billy, says the lawyer, represent freedom; ergo, says the film, they must be destroyed. If there is any irony in this supposition, I was unable to detect it in the screenplay written by Fonda, Hopper and Terry Southern. Wyatt and Billy don't seem particularly free, not if the only way they can face the world is through a grass curtain. As written and played, they are lumps of gentle clay, vacuous, romantic symbols, dressed in cycle drag. "Easy Rider," the first film to be directed by Dennis Hopper, won a special prize at this year's Cannes festival as the best picture by a new director (there was only one other picture competing in that category).

With the exception of Nicholson, its good things are familiar things — the rock score, the lovely, sometimes impressionistic photography by Laszlo Kovacs, the faces of small-town America. These things not only are continually compelling but occasionally they dazzle the senses, if not the mind. Hopper, Fonda and their friends went out into America looking for a movie and found instead a small, pious statement (upper case) about our society (upper case), which is sick (upper case). It's pretty but lower case cinema. EASY RIDER, written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hooper and Terry Southern; directed by Mr. Hopper; produced by Mr. Fonda; presented by the Pando Company in association with Raybert Productions; released by Columbia Pictures. At the Beckman Theater, 65th Street at Second Avenue. Running time: 94 minutes. (The Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code and Rating Administration classifies this film: "R—Restricted—persons under 16 not admitted, unless accompanied by parent or adult guardian") Wyatt . . . . .

Peter Fonda What's the Big Deal?: Easy Rider (1969) - MTV mtv Eric Snider 02/03/2010 When you hear the title Easy Rider , there's a good chance you start humming "Born to be Wild," the rock anthem on the soundtrack that has come to represent the movie's philosophy of youth, freedom, and drugs. Peter Biskind considered the movie so significant that he put it in the title of his New Hollywood history book, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. But this movie, about motorcycle-riding hippies on a road trip across America ... what's it about? Why does it matter? What's the big deal, man? The praise: The film's screenplay and Jack Nicholson 's supporting performance were nominated for Oscars, and director Dennis Hopper won the Best First Work award at the Cannes Film Festival. (To be fair, there was only one other film in that category.) The movie appears on the American Film Institute's top 100 list, both the 1998 and 2007 surveys.

The context: It's hard to imagine now, but until the late 1960s Hollywood studios didn't pay much attention to young moviegoers. Films aimed specifically at teenagers and young adults tended to be cheap afterthoughts, not the raison d'etre they are for Hollywood now. But in the '60s there was a confluence of three events. One, the Baby Boomers -- people born just after World War II -- were becoming adults and, if only by their sheer numbers, starting to dominate American culture. Two, the first filmmakers to have actually gone to film school were breaking into the business. These guys (they were mostly guys) had studied film, learning its philosophies and techniques in a formal setting, while their predecessors had learned the craft on the job. Three, the Vietnam War and the other turbulent events of the decade had made many of these Baby Boomers jaded and suspicious of authority. The "rebels" of the '50s, with or without causes, had been a fringe element, easily ignored or downplayed by Hollywood.

Now there was a big pot-smoking elephant in the room, and the movies couldn't ignore it -- especially now that the Boomers themselves were the ones making the movies. Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, both from 1967, had achieved extraordinary critical and financial success by tapping into that young market. For the first time, viewers in their early 20s were seeing characters that they could relate to, with the levels of sex and violence that they considered realistic, not the watered-down phoniness of Old Hollywood. This new movement came to be called New Hollywood, and its directors included Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Robert Altman, Roman Polanski, Brian De Palma, Peter Bogdanovich, and a couple dozen others. Easy Rider was shot in the early months of 1968, when The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde were still in theaters -- before anyone really knew the impact they would have, in other words. Unlike those films, which had studio backing, Easy Rider was a truly independent production, made for very little money, none of it from a studio, with all the creative decisions in the drug-addled hands of the filmmakers.

Drugs played a huge part in the film, both on-screen and off. Legend has it the filmmakers threw a wrap party after "finishing" the movie before realizing they'd forgotten to shoot a pivotal final scene. Roger Ebert, reflecting on the film years later, wrote that "it did a lot of repeat business while the sweet smell of pot drifted through theaters." The movie: Two hippies, called Captain America ( Peter Fonda ) and Billy ( Dennis Hopper ), make a load of cash on a drug deal, hop on their motorcycles, and head from California toward New Orleans, where they hope to arrive in time for Mardi Gras. Along the way, they encounter much persecution and harassment because of their longhaired hippie ways. They also visit a commune, smoke a lot of marijuana, and ingest some other illicit substances. What it influenced: One of the film's most significant contributions was its soundtrack, composed primarily of pre-existing rock songs that the film's editor, Donn Cambern, had listened to while he worked. Licensing for these songs cost $1 million, more than twice what the film had cost to make. But it was worth it.

The soundtrack added immeasurably to the film's youth appeal, thus enhancing its box-office gross, and the album itself sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Before this, rock 'n' roll in movies was mostly limited to Elvis Presley musicals and beach party films. A compilation album featuring songs not written specifically for the movie, and recorded by numerous different artists working for different record labels, was unheard of. The Easy Rider LP changed that, opening the door for soundtracks like American Graffiti, The Big Chill, and Almost Famous. Today, almost all films, especially youth-oriented ones, have compilation soundtracks. In fact, the trend became so common that it eventually hurt Easy Rider: The album went out of print in the 1980s and '90s because the record labels, who'd had no problem with the silly soundtrack idea in 1969, were now overly familiar with the process and no longer wanted to license their songs without charging an arm and a leg. I suspect the film's hippies would have a few choice words for that attitude.

Jack Nicholson, appearing only in the second half of the film, earned a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance and was launched into stardom, aided considerably by Five Easy Pieces a year later, which got him his first Best Actor nomination. He was lucky, too -- his role in Easy Rider was supposed to have been played by Rip Torn, who dropped out early in the production after arguments with Hopper. (A great many interesting things in Hollywood have happened because of arguments with Dennis Hopper.) Easy Rider grossed $60 million worldwide -- which would be about $300 million at today's ticket prices -- and shocked Hollywood into the realization that, what do you know, young people like to see movies about themselves. Prior to this, counter-culture figures, if depicted cinematically at all, were side characters or villains, not protagonists, and young people in general were portrayed like the squares in the beach party movies. Easy Rider spoke to a segment of society that felt marginalized by the Establishment, a segment that had rarely been reflected in movies.

Roger Ebert, age 27 when the film came out, loved it, and wrote in his four-star review, "I suspect many members of the Hollywood older generation believe, sincerely and deeply, that Easy Rider doesn't have a story, and doesn't mean anything, and that the kids are all crazy these days." He was right about that. The New York Times' Vincent Canby, age 45, wrote condescendingly: Easy Rider ... is a motorcycle drama with decidedly superior airs about it. How else are we to approach a movie that advertises itself: "A man went looking for America. And couldn't find it anywhere"? Right away you know that something superior is up, that somebody is making a statement, and you can bet your boots (cowboy, black leather) that it's going to put down the whole rotten scene. What scene? Whose? Why? Man, I can't tell you if you don't know. What I mean to say is, if you don't groove, you don't groove. You might as well split.

Hollywood's first response to the film's success, of course, was to crank out more really cheap movies that catered to -- OK, pandered to -- the rebellious youth culture. Most of these were terrible and have titles you wouldn't recognize. But over time the studios learned how to really target teenagers and young adults, whom they hadn't taken seriously before. Easy Rider, along with Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, caused a major shift in thinking. Films like Transformers represent a perversion in that thinking, where films aren't just made for young people, they're made ONLY for young people. Hopper, who'd had moderate success as a TV and movie actor before this, thought he'd have a career as a director after Easy Rider. His next film, though, called The Last Movie (and it almost was), was even more absurd, non-linear, and minimalist than Easy Rider had been, and audiences and critics rejected it. He didn't direct another film until 1980; today he's primarily known as an actor. What to look for: Many of the New Hollywood filmmakers were inspired by the French New Wave, which we discussed in conjunction with Jules and Jim .

Easy Rider has many of the stylistic flourishes, including the occasional burst of frantic editing, zooms, and close-ups. It also has the stark realism, the casual dialogue, the natural lighting, and the same kind of less-than-happily-ever-after ending as many New Wave films. You might think a movie made by young people aimed at a youthful audience would be fast-paced and energetic. You would be mistaken. Easy Rider has only the barest wisp of a plot, and there are many, many scenes of the guys riding motorcycles. The film's editor originally put the rock songs over those scenes to make the footage more interesting while he was editing them, and it helps tremendously. If you get into the rhythm of the movie -- the freedom of the open road, the easy-goin' rock tunes playin' -- you can get a sense of what 1969 audiences saw in it. Of course, to really feel what they felt, you'd probably need to smoke some grass first, but I cannot publicly endorse that. The guys are on the road looking for "freedom." They talk about freedom a lot. Your discussion question for afterward is: Did they find it? Why or why not?

What does "freedom" mean, anyway? Explain your answers in a paragraph and turn it in at the beginning of class next week. Oh, and Captain America and Billy visit a whorehouse in Louisiana. The women whose services they hire are played by Karen Black and Toni Basil. And in an early scene, the man who buys drugs from the guys, sitting in a car and wearing huge glasses, is record producer Phil Spector, in his pre-wife-killing days. What's the big deal: It's easy to write Easy Rider off as a movie made by hippies, for hippies, and fueled by copious amounts of drugs. And while that's all true, it's somewhat reductive. Hopper, who had never directed anything before, was in over his head, and trying to emulate the French New Wavers his first time out was ill-advised. Nonetheless, there's a certain charm in seeing a new filmmaker strive so earnestly to replicate the style of someone he admires. Whether the film is entertaining to a 21st-century audience or not, the moviegoers of 1969 -- the people it was made for, the people it spoke to -- saw themselves in it.

Think of the times you've felt like a movie was speaking to you. That's pretty far out, man. Further reading: As always, wait until you've seen the movie before reading these items. Here's a review of the soundtrack album that has some insight into the compilation process. Vincent Canby's original review of the film is here ; for comparison, here is Roger Ebert's review. And here's Ebert's "Great Movies" essay from 2004. Here's a fascinating interview with the film's cinematographer, Laszlo Kovacs, from 2004, offering plenty of juicy behind-the-scenes information. And here's the always insightful Tim Dirks discussing the film in detail at AMC's Filmsite. * * * * Easy Rider Movie Review & Film Summary (1969) | Roger Ebert Tweet Henry Fonda is said to have come out of "Easy Rider" a confused and puzzled man. He had worked in movies for 35 years and made some great ones, and now his son Peter was going to be a millionaire because of a movie Henry couldn't even understand. Advertisement Where did those two guys come from, he wanted to know. What was their background?

How did they set up that drug-smuggling deal? Where were they going? And what, oh what, did the movie mean? I suspect many members of the Hollywood older generation believe, sincerely and deeply, that "Easy Rider" doesn't have a story, and doesn't mean anything, and that the kids are all crazy these days. But in fact, director Dennis Hopper has done an old and respectable thing. He has told his story in cinematic shorthand, instead of spelling it out in dreary detail. Fifty years ago, Hollywood figured out that if you put the good guys in white hats you could eliminate 10 minutes of explanation from every Western. Hopper has applied this technique to the motorcycle movie. (He also has made a great film, but more of that later.) Advertisement Everybody "knows" that "Easy Rider" is tremendously popular with high school and college-age kids. But these kids apparently sprang into existence full-blown, and did not grow up or go to any other movie before they found this one. That's the way Hollywood sees it. Hollywood believes in magic.

In fact, the same kids who did "Easy Rider" were on dates in the drive-ins a few years ago when "The Wild Angels" and " Hell's Angels on Wheels " and all the other motorcycle pictures came along. When the Hollywood establishment was dismissing motorcycle movies as an unpleasant low-budget fad, the kids already knew that something was happening here. Because the Hell's Angel, like the gangster, was a bad guy produced by the society he victimized and was tied to it by a love-hate relationship that created some really neat sex and violence scenes. And someday it was inevitable that a great film would come along, utilizing the motorcycle genre, the same way the great Westerns suddenly made everyone realize they were a legitimate American art form, "Easy Rider" is the picture. Advertisement In all the exploitation-type motorcycle movies, the central characters were outlaws from conventional society. They rejected the establishment values (but took them seriously enough to attach importance to putting them down). They used drugs and beat up each other, and cops hated them on sight. There was usually an ounce of worth in the hero, however. Actors like Peter Fonda and Adam Roarke played gang leaders in the tradition of Brando.

But, unlike Brando (in "The Wild One,") they usually repented when they saw the suffering they'd caused. They didn't repent all over the place, but they did repent, and if you looked close you could catch them at it in the last scene. "Easy Rider" takes the gang leader (Fonda) and condenses his gang into one uptight archetype (played by director Hopper.) It takes the aimless rebellion of the bike gangs and channels it into specific rejection of the establishment (by which is meant everything from rednecks to the Pentagon to hippies on communes). Advertisement Fonda and Hopper specifically break with the establishment by smuggling cocaine across the Mexican border; that's a no-no. But during most of the picture they have cash money hidden in their gas tanks, not dope. They sold their dope to the establishment (represented ironically by rock tycoon Phil Spector in a Rolls-Royce). They sold out, that is. And now they want to go to Florida and retire. So Fonda and Hopper the dope-smugglers are symbols of every earnest, hard working, law abiding, middle-class wage-slave selling his integrity to the establishment every day.

(Whether you believe this is immaterial to the symbolism, which works anyway.) But it's hard to identify with the Fonda and Hopper characters. So Hopper and his co-writers Fonda and Terry Southern write in a brilliant character, Old George (played magnificently by Jack Nicholson ). And when this alcoholic, tragic ACLU lawyer from a small Southern town enters the picture, suddenly that's us there on the bike with Fonda. And the movie starts to work. Advertisement If you follow the story closely in "Easy Rider," you find out it isn't there. The rough-cut of the movie reportedly ran over three hours, and Hopper edited it to a reasonable length by throwing out the story details and keeping the rest. So the heroes are suspended in an invisible story, like falcons on an invisible current of air. You can't see it, but it holds them up. All of this divests a motorcycle movie of its weak point (the story) and develops its strong point (the role of the self-proclaimed rebel in a conformist society). It's not just bike freaks who get in trouble when they challenge the establishment -- it's everybody, even Old George.

And yet, "Easy Rider" suggests, it's not as simple as that. We almost forget that the Fonda and Hopper characters have also sold out. Victims can sell out just as well as their persecutors. They sold out because what they were trying to be was the mirror image of the rednecks in the truck, and neither life-style is healthy. And so there they were, their gas tanks stuffed full of bribes from the establishment, and you remember hearing somewhere that, in the South, "easy rider" is slang for a prostitute's lover. Advertisement 'Easy Rider's' 'Captain America' bike sold for $1.35 million - LA Times 'Easy Rider's' 'Captain America' bike sold for $1.35 million Captain America, from Easy Rider Profiles in History "Captain America," the iconic chopper featured in the 1969 movie "Easy Rider," was sold at auction, though some question the bike's authenticity. "Captain America," the iconic chopper featured in the 1969 movie "Easy Rider," was sold at auction, though some question the bike's authenticity.

(Profiles in History) Charles Fleming Contact Reporter With fees, the auction sale price for 'Easy Rider' motorcycle totals more than $1.62 million Despite reports that cast doubt on its provenance, a "Captain America" chopper purported to be the last remaining motorcycle used in the filming of the 1969 movie "Easy Rider" sold at auction Saturday night for $1.35 million -- or just more than $1.6 million, after auction fees are included. The chrome-heavy, star-spangled Harley Davidson panhead, ridden by actor Peter Fonda in the ground-breaking movie directed by his co-star Dennis Hopper, was owned by Los Angeles Realtor and movie memorabilia collector Michael Eisenberg. Eisenberg bought the "Captain America" bike earlier this year, having become convinced it was the last remaining "Easy Rider" motorcycle by Dan Haggerty , the actor most known for his role as "Grizzly Adams." Haggerty had a small part in "Easy Rider," and helped work on the four motorcycles used in the filming of the druggy road movie. Haggerty had confirmed for Eisenberg stories that three of the four "Easy Rider" bikes were stolen and sold for parts before the movie was released.

Haggerty claimed to have built this "Captain America" bike from the wreckage of the fourth bike, which was nearly destroyed in filming the movie's dramatic finale. Eisenberg and auction house Profiles in History cited Haggerty as their principal reference in authenticating the bike, even though Haggerty admitted to The Times that he had already sold and authenticated a different "Captain America" bike, years before, and provided written assurances to its owner that it was the one true remaining "Easy Rider" chopper. Fonda, who co-wrote the "Easy Rider" screenplay and drew the original sketch on which the iconic, stretched chopper was based, told The Times he was very concerned by Haggerty's previous authentication, and hoped the auction would be called off. "There's a big rat stinking someplace in this," the veteran actor said last week. Auctioneers at Profiles in History, overseeing the Calabasas sale of "Captain America" on Saturday night, displayed documents signed by Haggerty to establish the bike's bona fides. The bidding was brisk. Lot 1121 opened at 10:15 p.m., with a reserve price at $1 million.

Within minutes, the bids jumped by $25,000 increments through $1.1 million to $1.3 million, finally coming to $1,350,000. (Charles Fleming) It appeared multiple parties, bidding from the auction house floor, had taken an interest. The action at the extremely brisk weekend auction, where Hollywood artifacts from gowns to original movie scripts typically take less than one minute to sell off, lasted a full seven minutes. Then Lot 1122 opened, a batch of "Easy Rider" movie posters, followed by Lot 1123 -- a tan suit tailored for cowboy actor Roy Rogers. The "Easy Rider" action was over. The winning bidder was not identified. According to some reports, the "Captain America" bike, sold at that price, now becomes the most expensive motorcycle in the world. Easy Rider (1969) Pages: ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) Background Easy Rider (1969) is the late 1960s "road film" tale of a search for freedom (or the illusion of freedom) in a conformist and corrupt America, in the midst of paranoia, bigotry and violence.

Released in the year of the Woodstock concert, and made in a year of two tragic assassinations (Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King), the Vietnam War buildup and Nixon's election, the tone of this 'alternative' film is remarkably downbeat and bleak, reflecting the collapse of the idealistic 60s. Easy Rider, one of the first films of its kind, was a ritualistic experience and viewed (often repeatedly) by youthful audiences in the late 1960s as a reflection of their realistic hopes of liberation and fears of the Establishment. The iconographic, 'buddy' film, actually minimal in terms of its artistic merit and plot, is both memorialized as an image of the popular and historical culture of the time and a story of a contemporary but apocalyptic journey by two self-righteous, drug-fueled, anti-hero (or outlaw) bikers eastward through the American Southwest. Their trip to Mardi Gras in New Orleans takes them through limitless, untouched landscapes (icons such as Monument Valley), various towns, a hippie commune, and a graveyard (with hookers), but also through areas where local residents are increasingly narrow-minded and hateful of their long-haired freedom and use of drugs.

The film's title refers to their rootlessness and ride to make "easy" money; it is also slang for a pimp who makes his livelihood off the earnings of a prostitute. However, the film's original title was The Loners. [The names of the two main characters, Wyatt and Billy, suggest the two memorable Western outlaws Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid - or 'Wild Bill' Hickcock. Rather than traveling westward on horses as the frontiersmen did, the two modern-day cowboys travel eastward from Los Angeles - the end of the traditional frontier - on decorated Harley-Davidson choppers on an epic journey into the unknown for the 'American dream'.] According to slogans on promotional posters, they were on a search: A man went looking for America and couldn't find it anywhere. Their costumes combine traditional patriotic symbols with emblems of loneliness, criminality and alienation - the American flag, cowboy decorations, long-hair, and drugs. Both Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper co-starred, Fonda produced, and 32 year old Hopper directed (his first effort). [It was produced by B.B.S.

(formed by Bob Rafelson - the director of Five Easy Pieces (1970) , Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner), already known for the groundbreaking, surrealistic Head (1968), a cult masterpiece that starred the Monkees (from the popular TV series) and was co-written by unemployed actor Jack Nicholson.] Fonda (as lead actor), Hopper (as uncredited second unit director), and Jack Nicholson (as screenwriter) had participated in director Roger Corman's low-budget, definitive LSD film The Trip (1967) a few years earlier. And Fonda had also starred in Roger Corman's and American International's ground-breaking The Wild Angels (1966) - a biker's tale about the 'Hell's Angels'. The first scenes to be shot were on grainy 16 mm. in New Orleans (during Mardi Gras) on a budget of $12,000, afterwards followed by funds for a total budget of $380,000. This follow-up film to The Wild Angels (1966) premiered at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival and won the festival's award for the Best Film by a new director.

The film received two Academy Award nominations: Best Original Screenplay (co-authored by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern - known previously for scripting Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, or... (1964) ), and Best Supporting Actor for Jack Nicholson in one of his earlier, widely-praised roles as a drunken young lawyer. Easy Rider surprisingly, was an extremely successful, low-budget (under $400,000), counter-cultural, independent film for the alternative youth/cult market - one of the first of its kind that was an enormous financial success, grossing $40 million worldwide. Its story contained sex, drugs, casual violence, a sacrificial tale (with a shocking, unhappy ending), and a pulsating rock and roll soundtrack reinforcing or commenting on the film's themes. Groups that participated musically included Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix, The Band and Bob Dylan. The pop cultural, mini-revolutionary film was also a reflection of the "New Hollywood," and the first blockbuster hit from a new wave of Hollywood directors (e.g., Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, and Martin Scorsese) that would break with a number of Hollywood conventions.

It had little background or historical development of characters, a lack of typical heroes, uneven pacing, jump cuts and flash-forward transitions between scenes, an improvisational style and mood of acting and dialogue, background rock 'n' roll music to complement the narrative, and the equation of motorbikes with freedom on the road rather than with delinquent behaviors. However, its idyllic view of life and example of personal film-making was overshadowed by the self-absorbent, drug-induced, erratic behavior of the filmmakers, chronicled in Peter Biskind's tell-all Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock 'N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (1999). And the influential film led to a flurry of equally self-indulgent, anti-Establishment themed films by inferior filmmakers, who overused some of the film's technical tricks and exploited the growing teen-aged market for easy profits.

Hopper's success with this film gave him the greenlight from Universal Pictures (and $850,000) for his next project The Last Movie (1971) which ended up being a colossal failure, due in part to reports of drug-induced orgies during filming, and its year-long editing process (delayed by alleged use of psychedelic drugs for 'inspiration'). The Story One morning, two free-wheeling, long-haired, social misfits/dropouts/hippies ride up to La Contenta Bar, south of the border in Mexico. With Jesus (Antonio Mendoza), they walk around the side of the bar through an auto-wrecking dump yard. After Jesus scoops out a small amount of white powder (cocaine) onto a mirror, they both sniff the dope. In Spanish, the thinner, calmer one chuckles: "Si pura vida (Yes, it's pure life.)" Then, he hands a packet of money to Jesus who thumbs through it and smiles. The two bikers, who have presumably orchestrated the decision to buy the cocaine in Mexico, are given cases of the powder in the drug deal.

Before the film cuts to the next scene, the loud noise of a jet engine plays on the soundtrack. In the next scene of their dope deal, they are now in California where they have smuggled the drugs for sale to a dealer. The two are on an airport road next to the touch down point of jet planes at Los Angeles International Airport - the sound of approaching planes is excruciatingly loud. A Rolls Royce pulls into the frame with their Connection (Phil Spector, the famous rock and roll producer in a cameo role). While testing the white powder in the front seat of their white pickup truck, the Connection ducks every time a plane lands. In exchange for the drugs, the Bodyguard (Mac Mashourian) gives a large quantity of cash to one of the bikers in the front seat of the Rolls. The drug deal is finalized to the tune of Steppenwolf's "The Pusher," a song which is overtly against hard-drug pushers and dealing.

You know I smoked a lot of grass Oh Lord, I popped a lot of pills But I've never touched nothin' That my spirit could kill You know I've seen a lot of people walkin' round With tombstones in their eyes But the pusher don't care Aw, if you live or if you die God damn the Pusher God damn, hey I say the Pusher I said God damn, God damn the Pusher man. With the stash of money they've made from selling drugs, they have financed their trip, including the purchase of high-handled motorcycles. One of them rolls up the banknotes and stuffs them into a long plastic tube that will be inserted snake-like into the tear-drop shaped gas tank of his stars-and-stripes decorated motorcycle.

The two part-time drug dealers are: a cool and introspective "Captain America" Wyatt (Peter Fonda) on a gleaming, silver-chromed low-riding bike with a 'stars-and-stripes' tear-drop gas tank, wearing a tight leather pants held at the waist by a round belt-buckle and a black leather jacket with an American flag emblazoned on the back; also with a 'stars-and-stripes' helmet mustached and shaggy, long-haired Billy the Kid (Dennis Hopper), with a tan-colored bush hat, fringed buckskin jacket, shades, and an Indian necklace of animals' teeth Wyatt casts off his wristwatch to the ground, a literal and symbolic flourish that shows his new-found freedom and rejection of time constraints in modern society. As they take to the open road on their motorcycles, cross the Colorado River and pass through unspoiled buttes and sand-colored deserts, the credits begin to scroll, accompanied by the sound of the popular song by Steppenwolf: "Born To Be Wild." It is the start of a beautiful adventure as they travel through memorable landscapes of America's natural beauty, accompanied by the pounding of rock music.

Get your motor runnin' Moviepage custom Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers (played by Fonda and Hopper) who travel through the American Southwest and South. The success of Easy Rider helped spark the New Hollywood phase of filmmaking during the early 1970s. The film was added to the Library of Congress National Registry in 1998. A landmark counterculture film, and a "touchstone for a generation" that "captured the national imagination," Easy Rider explores the societal landscape, issues, and tensions in the United States during the 1960s, such as the rise and fall of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyle. Easy Rider is famous for its use of real drugs in its portrayal of marijuana and other substances.

IMDb: MULTISUBTITLE:Subtitles in many languages as:Greek(Soon),English,French,German,Czeï¿½ch,Danish,Dutch,Hebrew,Hungarian,Italianï¿½,Norwegian,Portuguese (Portugal,Brazil),Serbian,Spanish,Swedisï¿½h,Turkish. Directed by: Dennis Hopper Produced by: Peter Fonda Written by: Peter Fonda ,Dennis Hopper, Terry Southern Starring: Peter Fonda ,Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson Music by: Roger McGuinn Cinematography: Lï¿½szlï¿½ Kovï¿½cs Editing by: Donn Cambern Studio: Raybert Productions , Pando Company Inc. Distributed by: Columbia Pictures Release date(s): July 14, 1969 Running time: 95 minutes Country: United States Of America , U.S.A. Language: English Budget: $360,000 Box office: $41,728,598 Interviews with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda about the making of "EaysyRider" Move over the videos and push the "play" button

Question: Who directed the 1969 film 'Easy Rider'?
Answer: DENNIS HOPPER